tournament theory qs

q1
Hi, lately I've been playing weekly tournies as they seem really soft. However Im having a little bit of difficulty adjusting to 20 bb poker. I was wondering if there are any charts about opening ranges or shoving ranges by position. Thanks in advance.

Q2
When are add ons profitable? In deep tournies I feel like I have enough time to make enough moves before the blinds become overwhelming, and in small short turboish tournies I feel the add on hardly buffers u for the overwhelming blinds.

Q3
A8s sitting on 5500 which is avg stack UTG with 50 of 75 entrants. Top 6 get paid. Blinds are about to increase from 300/600 to 500/1k, I opted to shove. Does avg stack have any factor in this? My thought process was pretty much "lloll a hi 9 bbs is meganuts"

Q1: I'm generally having pretty standard fairly-agro preflop ranges from LP and tend to open up a tiny bit more than average in MP and open a shit ton of hands from EP. Of course this is all relative to table image, average bb's at the table and tournament, and other dynamics that play just as an important role as hand ranges. With 10 - 15 bb's I prefer to have a standard shoving range or at least a game plan preflop where if i raise a hand i know what i'm going to do on 95% of flops against 95% of opponents.

Q2: I always add-on and buy-in twice in rebuy tournaments. I can't think of a reason to ever not do this.

Q3: This is a trivial spot as the correct answer can't be found with just the information that you have provided. This really depends on your image. if you're playing a 6/6 you can shove any suited connector and A7s+ , K9s+ , etc. from utg and it will be profitable with 9 bb's if the blinds are about to increase, but if you're playing a 18/16 I would just fold and wait it out a little bit longer, but in spots like these you should be looking at doubling up/shoving a lot in positions where you are going to have the most fold equity.

1) PM me and when i find time ill email you a jpeg or a link to a pushing chart from some poker book that a 180man reg once sent to me. FWIW charts are a good 'guide' but don't account for looseness or tightness of table, avg stack, etc. so while this chart has 'correct' pushes, its still situational

2) with add ons, its generally good to add on. first reason - most rebuys, its something like 1500 chips for X dollars, add on of like 2000 for X dollars. you get more chips per dollar, and everyone else is doing it, so you might as well. if you are short or avg stack or above avg, it makes sense to do it. the only cases i can think of where it doesnt seem to make sense to add on, would be you have such an overwhelming amount of chips that it makes no difference. say blinds are 150 /300 at the break, avg stack is 15k and you have like 100k+. adding on another 2k is a disproportionate gain to compared to the cost of another buy in. likewise, if the avg stack is something like 15k and same blinds, and you are stuck with a stack like 500 chips....you could consider just saying GG. both of these situations are rare, and you are much more likely to wind up with a near average stack where its better to add on.

3) the issue with this is you don't say if it is 6 handed or 9 handed, and if there is an ante. at this stage in the game, with these blinds, there typically is an ante. the decision you make in this spot should be dictated by your 'M' (your stack divided by the size of the pot pre flop). so at a 9 handed table, with these blinds, no ante, you have an M of 6.1 and i think the proper play is a fold. with an ante (typically 10% of the bb) the pot preflop would be 1440, giving your an M of 3.9, in which your hand becomes a push - there is enough dead money in play to warrant a push now, and the amount of hands you can see has decreased significantly. in a 6 handed game, its a trivial push, i believe.

Ty for all the help.

Any tips regarding 13-15 bb play? I feel like this is where I excel over the field, as people don't really adjust calling ranges. I tend to shove extremely wide and and steal blinds till I reach 20-25 bb. But at this stage is where I am clueless. I don't know if I should be opening KQs from utg+1 or how to react to a reshove from a 10bb stack after opening 88's on the CO.

All these spots seem so close and marginal @_@. My mentality/strategy though as of late, has been to just treat the 20-25 bb stack like the 13-15 bb stack and it's been working well, if only because as stated earlier, the opponents I face don't really adjust. But just to reiterate my play/game truly falls apart when I play 20-30 bb against other people with 20-30 bbs. I hate opening 2-3 bb utg, and MUCH rather 3 bet bluff from the button/blinds rather than open a hand like TT or AJ ep/mp.

Just ranting at this point, but was looking for some general guidelines on how to play 20-30 bb poker.

ty to both of you

On September 01 2011 21:21 chris wrote: 1) PM me and when i find time ill email you a jpeg or a link to a pushing chart from some poker book that a 180man reg once sent to me. FWIW charts are a good 'guide' but don't account for looseness or tightness of table, avg stack, etc. so while this chart has 'correct' pushes, its still situational 2) with add ons, its generally good to add on. first reason - most rebuys, its something like 1500 chips for X dollars, add on of like 2000 for X dollars. you get more chips per dollar, and everyone else is doing it, so you might as well. if you are short or avg stack or above avg, it makes sense to do it. the only cases i can think of where it doesnt seem to make sense to add on, would be you have such an overwhelming amount of chips that it makes no difference. say blinds are 150 /300 at the break, avg stack is 15k and you have like 100k+. adding on another 2k is a disproportionate gain to compared to the cost of another buy in. likewise, if the avg stack is something like 15k and same blinds, and you are stuck with a stack like 500 chips....you could consider just saying GG. both of these situations are rare, and you are much more likely to wind up with a near average stack where its better to add on. 3) the issue with this is you don't say if it is 6 handed or 9 handed, and if there is an ante. at this stage in the game, with these blinds, there typically is an ante. the decision you make in this spot should be dictated by your 'M' (your stack divided by the size of the pot pre flop). so at a 9 handed table, with these blinds, no ante, you have an M of 6.1 and i think the proper play is a fold. with an ante (typically 10% of the bb) the pot preflop would be 1440, giving your an M of 3.9, in which your hand becomes a push - there is enough dead money in play to warrant a push now, and the amount of hands you can see has decreased significantly. in a 6 handed game, its a trivial push, i believe.

good post. ty